I could say that the new essay collection False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Verso) edited by Liza Featherstone is a largely serious but very readable policy study of Madam Presumptive Nominee. And, I’d be right. Any even-tempered wonk or international relations hobbyist will find pleasure and instruction in its pages. There are those mild many to whom this work will offer a good afternoon in the company of lettered writers who, their leftism notwithstanding, are not half as annoying to read as, say, me.

But, this week, I don’t feel like advancing the rational non-fiction reader’s enrichment. This is not a review for those happy, sane people eager to learn. This is a form of therapy for those of us who will lose more than all our shit the next time we hear that Clinton’s recent victory is also a victory “for all women”, followed by some quotation mashup about fish, bicycles and how men all want to kill us when we laugh at them, or something.

“But doesn’t Clinton have a really bad record on foreign policy, corporate welfare, incarceration and public education?”

I prescribe this book as palliative care to my comrades whose hope is dying. I recommend this book as short-term pain relief. I suggest inserting this book into your tortured person by any pass possible. Read it and shut your big mouth up for a minute, because the moans of the You Go Girl sisters only grow louder when you enter their orgy of representational politics and say something like, “But doesn’t Clinton have a really bad record on foreign policy, corporate welfare, incarceration and public education?”

They will only say “Well at least she gets things done!”, that you are a “Bernie Bro” and that your “sexism” is in itself more evidence for the need of inspiring women like Hillary to ascend.

What is wrong with so many people of the feminist present? Surely, if one is enthusiastic enough about Secretary Clinton to applaud her win, one is also a little familiar with her political past and current policy commitments, few of which do not harm the majority of her countrywomen, some of which have brutalised women of other shores.

Headlines should alert many feminists to the fact that this neoliberal hawk is using their movement as a positioning statement and not as a policy guide. But, I guess they’re too blinded by the colourful pantsuits to notice she was such a frequent customer at Lockheed. Those of us who did notice when Clinton seemed to be up to some economic or actual butchery can take False Choices to bed and cry in greater detail. And the chapters by Donna Murch and Yasmin Nair that assess Clinton’s past and present policy on incarceration, which demonstrate that Black Lives Matter to her only as electoral utility, are likely to produce tears.

The power vacuum created by Clinton in Libya is currently being filled by Islamic State, a fairly un-feminist organisation as I understand it.

What is most immediately likely to produce a result for us Australians is HRC’s foreign policy. Clinton’s State Department, visited in a chapter by Medea Benjamin, makes Kissinger’s look like a scene from The Mikado. Hillary may not have known the details of Gaddafi’s extrajudicial assassination, achieved in part with a sodomising bayonet, when her response was caught on camera. But, she certainly seemed happy to take credit for it when she laughed, “We came! We saw! He died!” “That sent a message that the US would look the other way at crimes committed by allies against its official enemies,” writes Benjamin.

A person of the hard right is, of course, at her liberty to applaud this “hard choice”. But, the feminist who counts the welfare of other women among her interests might not be happy to learn that the power vacuum created by Clinton in Libya is currently being filled by Islamic State, a fairly un-feminist organisation as I understand it. And, then there’s all those brown women’s bodies in the Mediterranean. And those children dead by drone strike in Pakistan and Yemen. “Obama’s top diplomat was a forceful advocate for military intervention in that nation’s civil war,” Benjamin writes of Syria, and didn’t that war, whoops sorry “Moment of American Leadership”, turn out marvellously well?

HRC’s foreign policy choices may have been hard, but they were hardly productive. Her role as Secretary of State is frequently cited by feminist writers as a qualification for office. Over a section on foreign policy False Choices reminds us to ask just what kind of leadership this qualifies her for. In my view, and in the more reliable one of foreign policy analysists, her hawkishness qualifies her not as a fearless realist, but as a pretty shit ideological interventionist. Who has been pretty shit for some time. In the book’s preface, we are told of the likelihood that it was Clinton as First Lady who convinced her husband to invade Kosovo. “Gail Sheehy reports that Hillary broke eighteen months of not speaking to Bill over the Lewinsky affair just to tell him he had to bomb Kosovo.” I LOLed.

Why? Why is the “progressive” west so currently convinced that any critique of an action taken by a woman is a critique of our gender itself?

But, did I laugh from a legitimate fear that the hegemon is likely to be led by an illogical aggressor? Or, did I laugh because I’m A Sexist? Oh, probably, Helen. Why do you hate women and why can’t you celebrate this wonderful day when we can all tell our daughters, “Look! Look at the lady who killed so many other daughters in Arab and gulf states?” Seriously. This is the shite that actual feminists are actually saying with their human woman mouths. This is why the publishers of False Choices felt the need to print “Is this book sexist?” in big bold letters on the back cover. This was about the only thing I didn’t like much about the book—well, if we don’t count the reminder that the world is about to be advanced to the next level of neoliberal shit.

Why? Why is the “progressive” west so currently convinced that any critique of an action taken by a woman is a critique of our gender itself? Actually, this question is addressed with good recourse to humour and theory in Catherine Liu’s essay Neoliberal Fictions. It’s a marvellous piece which uses Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird to illustrate a self-fancying white liberal ideology that deigns to occasionally soothe the black, the illiterate, the poor. I would also name Nair’s among my favourite essays in this pessimistic miracle, but I shouldn’t, as I know her a little. Which is fun for me, but also depressing. It means the global community of non-liberal feminists is really that small.

And, it is small. Not to adopt the persecuted posture preferred by Clinton’s supporters, but at some point in the last 20 years, being a feminist opposed to identity or representational politics became terribly unpopular. Like, way more unpopular and less profitable than being the sort of feminist who writes Why Women of Colour Have the Right to be Represented on Game of Thrones.

The uncritical demand for women’s rights and representation has become of far greater interest to feminists and feminist commentators than their reality. This was baldly illustrated in our own nation when, on the day of her powerful “misogyny” speech, Julia Gillard also happened to see punitive legislation on single parents (i.e. mothers) pass through the Senate. This current appetite for representation above reality is fed by Hillary who delivered the first of many empowered victory speeches last week at Planned Parenthood. She supports a woman’s “right” to choose the terms of her fertility but, as Maureen Tkacik describes in an essay on abortion, proposes no means to make either termination or parenthood affordable.

But. You know. You Go Glen Coco etc.

Why is the choice of Wall Street also the choice of putative feminists? How can One Woman’s Brave Struggle possibly mean anything at all if it signifies no intention at all to alleviate the real struggle of real women? When did the experience of sexism become in itself a rationale for leadership and plaudits?

When the feminist fuck did this happen?

Did I miss some sort of talkshow event at which HRC gave away new compact cars for the modern-woman-on-the-go? Was I not informed of a discursive transition in which we no longer assessed potential world leaders for what they might do, but largely as inspiring celebs who gaily defy their “haters” like Taylor Swift? Was I absent on the day that bright and well-regarded Australian feminist Jane Caro set her long interest in public education aside to champion a policymaker whose devastation of US schools we can trace.

In her essay Waging War on Teachers, Megan Erickson describes Hillary’s “commitment” to education. Caro might insist that Clinton has “fought for the rights of women and girls all her life”, but what she overlooks is a history, started as Arkansas’ First Lady, that vilified teachers, welcomed Walmart executives into policy discussions and ignored evidence. Erickson writes, “Hillary Clinton believed and continues to believe, along with corporate education reformers, that the biggest crisis faced in America, and in its schools, is a crisis of values, not a crisis of inequity”. And this is a recurring theme in a book that examines many of Clinton’s platforms. Clinton, a late-capitalist mix of Nanny Statist and neoliberal, believes that it is people who need to be better. Not policies.

If only we could see that This One Inspiring Woman played a disproportionate role in such misfortune.

Clinton’s time has finally come. A very popular feminism, which has now taken hold in all major media outlets, believes that it is bad values and not bad policy that impedes a nation. They are ready to receive her. If only we weren’t racist. If only we weren’t sexist. If only we saw each other for the beautiful humans we really are!

Oh. Bugger me with a bayonet. If only we’d return, even occasionally, to first principles and see that it is not the poor character of individuals that leads to mass incarceration, refugee crises or unemployment. If only we could see that This One Inspiring Woman played a disproportionate role in such misfortune.

Anyhow. I feel I’ve earned another afternoon with this pessimistic book, which is absolutely full of fun new ways to despair. So, I’m off. Meantime, you enjoy your refreshing representational glass of HRC, whose presidency will prove every bit as useful to your gender as a can of coconut water. I’ll find some hemlock, which is the fate of the “sexist” who refuses to celebrate HRC.

False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton is edited by Liza Featherstone and is available in paperback in Australia on June 16.

The honest truth is that women can be just as venal, corrupt, stupid, and guilty of pretty much every sin as men, so we have achieved equality of the sexes.
A president who promised so much and delivered so little will be superseded by a woman whose history would make her unelectable if she was facing anyone who isn’t Donald Trump.
I despise those who give HRC a pass on her despicable history on the simple basis that her gender is a ‘get out of jail free card’. Everyone should be held accountable for their actions, but it seems that doesn’t apply to the Clinton’s.

How about we get real? Clinton is a standard issue US career politician. That’s how you get to be Secretary of State and stand for potus. What is all this getting stuck in because she deviates from someone’s model of the perfect female candidate for potus? Self centred nonsense is what.

Absolutely correct.All politicians have to know how to lie and manipulate–every male poli does this–look at our polis—Turnbull, Shorten, De Natale etc
Unless we get a woman in the US presidency this time it will be aeons before another woman takes up the challenge.
No one could stop the isis into Libya and it was excellent we got rid of Gaddafi–there are several more to get rid of and I hope she gets them too.
Helen herself is not a sweet young thing
This nonsense that a woman should be nice and sweet is a pipe dream to stop real women getting to the top.

A “sweet young thing”. I made no such claim, and if I did, it would be a trifle silly to compare my moral capacity to someone shortly to be the world’s most powerful politician.
Your understanding of Libya, which apparently has the leader merged with IS, and its invasion does not tally with most foreign policy analysis of the mistakes made. But. Heck. Let’s not allow the facts to get in the way of “humanitarian” intervention. They rarely have. And, no. WHo cares that this nation is oil rich. A mere coincidence.

Well, I delighted in “bugger me with a bayonet”. So refreshing to read your mix of scatalogy and acute observations of our sociological selves. It’s very hard to write ‘funny’, but your aim is unerring. Thanks.

Good stuff, Helen Razer and totally agree, jess. I expect there can be right feminists who do good stuff for women but uphold the social status quo. At least that’s good. tho half-hearted. But the death of critical thinking and our inability to have a decent argument with other feminists without being accused of not being one is not only tiresome but frightening. I’m from England and we’ve been through this already with La Thatcher, whom feminists hailed just because she was a woman and then watched her destroy the welfare state, unions and the caring in British politics with mounting horror. Women were big, but not the only big losers. Hillary may not be quite so ideologically driven, but she’s a thoroughly political animal who knows how to succeed in THIS world and will lie and cheat to destroy Bernie Sanders along the way. I doubt very much she has even noticed how many voters are thrilled to have someone with a coherent agenda and the passion to go with it

Magnificent, I remember going to the movies to watch the film about Margaret Thatcher with my small C communist mother and at the end told me it was the men in her life that made her do things she did, she needed to be more masculine than the men to succeed. There are no women on the right that are there by choice.
Feminists on the right have the religious superiority of knowing they are right and have no problem looking down on those on the left. Those from the left believe that those from the right have been suborned by their male partner and “Know not what they do “. The mantra that all women are pure goodness and are forced to do nasty stuff.
Like all the people I know on the left they think that if they only supply those poor delusional woman on the right with enough facts they will eventually get IT. That there is only one sisterhood, the left.

I am sorry about your mum. And not just because she was unable to raise another communist. It’s unfortunate that she thinks all right wing women are deluded by men. Whereas I think they are independently deluded. Ideology has no gender.

Helen, you are usually a decent read but I think you are badly in need of a good lie down at the moment. You accuse HRC of liability in the take over of Libya by IS, because of the execution of Gaddafi. Also in the invasion of Kosovo by the US/NATO. Both actions would have been the call of the sitting President in council with his advisors, not HRC. As for HRC waging war on teachers, I don’t think she has ever been in charge of schools policy anywhere. All of these accusations are a pretty big stretch, based on someone else’s accusation.

I understand that she is not your idea of a feminist, but your hysterics over her candidacy are unwarranted and frankly unworthy of you. You should have a hunt around and see if you locate a little of your objectivity.

I appreciate the flattery. But “rant” does get up me almost as much as “hysterical” does.
I understand that I use strong language and hold unpopular opinions. But, I am kind of in command of this writing caper. There*is* actually a pretty conventional structure, here. Even if I am free with the swears. I certainly had the “rant” surgically removed from me by dozens of careful editors. May Fairfax rest in peace.
Again. Not to appear ungrateful. And I know you meant it kindly.

“Hysterics”, Mark? Puh-lease! Way to fall into effed up gendered talk. This article is no different in writing style to any other of Helen’s that I’ve read. You may not agree with everything she says but please don’t fall into the “hysteria” trap. My views don’t necessarily sit straight on with Helen’s but I respect others views enough to accord them with a valid response that doesn’t include pejorative words such as this old chestnut that are at the heart of misogyny.

*Applauds Maria*
BTW, Hysteria Man. HRC’s involvement in public school policy is documented and dates back to 1984.
I’m not even going to argue with your claim that Secretaries of State have no agency. You know even less about US foreign policy than Hysterical Helen.

I am not Hysteria Man, I gave my name, but if conducting a discussion like a troll is your preference then so be it. In my defence, you say in your reply above that there is much evidence of HRC waging war on education since 1984, but offered none of it in your article. I certainly do not know of any. I also certainly am not an authority on american federal administration, but I am pretty sure that the President calls out the troops, no-one else. Not even the Secretary of State.

BTW if “bugger me with a bayonet” and “I will find some hemlock” aren’t at least a touch hysterical in the context of journalistic writing, then what is?

Mark. The word “hysteria” was gender-specific from its first utterance. It is believed to have originated from Hippocrates. It long meant “wandering womb” and even as medical and psychiatric science developed, it was still used exclusively to describe feminine madness until the twentieth century in written medical discourses. It is still used today to describe women due to this long history. To say that “hysterical” has no present sexist resonance is a bit like saying “shrewish” doesn’t.
There was no need for me to provide a reference for every publicly available fact in a book review. The book itself contains footnotes for every claim and even you might say “oh it’s just a bunch of stuff some journalists and academics said and there’s no proof”, well,, if you don’t trust journalists, academics and one of the world’s reputable publishing houses, you could always check, for example, the online archives of the New York Times. Essentially, you are blaming me for not giving you a link to bear out something that is common knowledge.
It is common knowledge that Hillary has long been actively and openly involved in public education policy. Caro knows it and mentions it in the piece to which I have linked. She was on Sesame Street during her time as First Lady talking about it, I recall. She didn’t hide it and the “Billary” label is a fact and not an offensive one. She was appointed officially with many duties as Arkansas and US First Lady.
If I have been “trollish”, then I am sorry. But, honestly, you’ve not behaved terribly well. Before making claims about the integrity of a writer, perhaps next time you could spend five minutes Googling. And perhaps consider what the scope of a book review is.

Well said Helen responding to Hysteria Man. Attacking you for supposedly being a troll demonstrates he has no rational argument to your argument. The US could easily have produced a better first female candidate for the presidency of their country.

Sadly all too true, but even Bob Brown supported the invasion of Libya and the Kosovo intervention was probably necessary if too late to save the lives of 7,000 Muslim boys and men. And she was not responsible for the invasion of Iraq and I seriously doubt whether she would have made that call herself.

Thank you, Helen, for your critique about this tired mantra of “having women in all the important places’ and about applauding the first woman Presidential nomination because she is a woman. It is one of the reasons I cannot bear to read Ann Summers’ diatribes, and she is not the only one. (think about the ‘feminist’ defense of that woman behind Tony Abbott, poor Peta Credlin).
Indeed, what is happened to feminism? Maybe that’s why every man and his dog (viz Turnbull) now is a feminist. Just listen to Bill Shorten answering a young woman’s question about why she is paid so much less for the same job as a man, and he starts waffling about domestic violence (‘the new black’, while no more refuges and no more courts where women have to face their attackers are planned). He could not even take that question serious.
The only hope we have is that those young women who supported Bernie Sanders will take up the task to insist that it is all about something much bigger than someone in a pantsuit who never gave two hoots about women, unless they are rich or black and useful. (I remember reading about the close relationship between Clinton and the guys from Goldmann Sachs, really scary).
Thanks for quoting Baudrillard, he always was the enfant terrible of the eventual corruptible French philosophes, but always had the deepest insights in the culture.

Give me misogyny, racism and violence over anything else when it comes to American politics. Simply because it reflects what the real politik is heading. Thats democracy and its working. And what if he does get in ? All rhetoric aside, Clinton represents that chance for a woman to achieve the highest office in America. So negatives aside, you have person devoid of policy and tending to be critical and personal against someone been g backed by the neo liberal establishment. We are fucked either way. Woman or girl in office. Does not matter.

“Give me misogyny, racism and violence over anything else when it comes to American politics. Simply because it reflects what the real politik is heading. ” This is not democracy unless you have a country of folks whose values are misogyny, racism and violence, which, you seem to believe is the default setting of US citizens. Sad state of affairs. I refuse to believe that.

One of the least loveable qualities of the wretched Clinton woman is her love of the 1970s when names like Gloria Steinhem really were doing the hard work on the feminist front. Hillary Clinton continued proving her staying ability to mediocrity by resembling a tube of Araldite while sticking hard to one of the all-time great American sleeze-bag presidents-hubby Bill.

What on earth have Americans really, really done to deserve a a choice between a trio of pug-uglies, Donald Trump-Hi Ginge! And the dancing duo of criminality Hillary and Bill?

“Human rights, dissidence, antiracism, SOS-this, SOS-that: these are soft, easy, post coitum historicum ideologies, ‘after-the-orgy’ ideologies for an easy-going generation which has known neither hard ideologies nor radical philosophies. The ideology of a generation which is neo-sentimental in its politics too, which has rediscovered altruism, conviviality, international charity and the individual bleeding heart. Emotional outpourings, solidarity, cosmopolitan emotiveness, multi-media pathos: all soft values harshly condemned by the Nietzschean, Marxo-Freudian age… A new generation, that of the spoilt children of the crisis, whereas the preceding one was that of the accursed children of history.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

You’re right. I could’ve chosen a better passage. This one is a bit “when I was your age…” That’s the thing though: you won’t find anyone from Gen X or older making these pissweak emo arguments based on pure identity politics.

‘Why is the “progressive” west so currently convinced that any critique of an action taken by a woman is a critique of our gender itself? ‘ A very good question.

Another good question is: why is it assumed that prominent women who may be claim to be feminists must also be politically progressive in order to be accepted as feminists? Is this the reason some prominent female conservative politicians like Julie Bishop disavow feminism (despite being somewhat progressive on social issues), because of feminism’s presumed association with, or even ownership by the political left?

Yes. Yours is a good question. It is addressed in part in the book. That feminism has been largely seen as leftist when many of its original superstars, Pankhurst and Wollstonecraft notably, were purely liberal (or in Pankhurst’s case, imperial) is curious.
Personally, I think the natural political place for feminism is on the material left. But, of course, you can’t make such prescriptions in this identity politics-driven age because Stop Telling Women What To Do. But, I do understand that there are many many feminists who believe very sincerely only in equal social opportunity and not an equal society.
I think anthologies of the type reviewed here are useful for articulating the difference between a liberal feminism and a left feminism. (There are more philosophical distinctions in feminism than that, but I’m talking purely about political feminism, here.)
I am very much in favour of writers who will say “we have nothing to do with liberal feminism”. Or, actually, liberal feminists who will articulate how their politics differ from, say, mine. It’s important to do this and not to hide the great distinctions. There’s not a lot of that. There is this, I think, quite misguided idea of solidarity in feminism where one is expected to support all women all the time. And to criticise only those feminists who do not appear to do that.
All of this means, of course, that ideas are not articulated, or not well received and understood. Because the primary worth of a feminist text or idea is attached to the feminist authoring it. If she seems to be being less than supportive to all feminist women, she is disregarded.
Here, we see where the histories of the left and of liberalism meet. On the one hand, we have this United Front solidarity where we are all In The Struggle and must not be seen to disagree. On the other, we must affirm the idea of the liberal individual.
Anyhow. Good question. Thanks.

Dear Helen,
I do love (again) your valiant attempt to re-road the question of feminism re HRC and it is entirely correct and necessary. For years (having been a radical feminist, and a socialist feminist, and a feminist dinosaur or whatever I would be called today or would call myself) I have been puzzled over these struggles among women, who should know better what it means to be a feminist, ie. what really matters. My theory is that whenever there was a chance to find political common ground (which dividing into liberal and socialist feminists already precluded) there was a re-writing of how to analyse power from a woman’s perspective. Having been for years a feminist reader and academic teacher (long retired) I found that we were always inescapably being guided (via several male theorists about power) towards struggles among ourselves, which has currently ended in political relativism and identity politics, that hopeless way of starting and ending with ‘I/myself’ (I am tempted to call it “narcissism”) as the measure of all things.
As yet I have not found how to overcome this debacle, though as an old mother of four old children, and seven ‘feminist’ grandchildren (I did my job there!), I still live in hope, while meantime I can only rage and that’s why I love reading you!
Keep writing!

Is this a rhetorical question?
I’d say it was largely his policies. Unlike other candidates, he made them pretty clear. His political personality was his commitment to policy; see his last speech when he refused the cries of “Bernie” and said, “This is bigger than Bernie” and “the struggle continues” declaring this movement of young people was the place where it would. Whether or not you happen to agree with Bernie (how anyone can object to his New Deal liberalism is beyond me. It’s moderate and will help capitalism survive) you must concede that he let his policy speak louder than he did. So, people voted for Bernie because of his policies which included free tuition, a livable basic wage and financial regulation of the sort that would prevent another ’08 disaster. I imagine it is the idea of being able to eat, live in a place whose equity was not smashed by Wall St and go to school that prompted these votes.

We are seeing repeated the same playbook employed so ruthlessly by President Bill Clinton. “Triangulation”. I recommend Christopher Hitchens 1999 book titled “No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton”.

An excerpt from a review:

“With blistering wit and meticulous documentation, Hitchens masterfully deconstructs Clinton’s abject propensity for pandering to the Left while delivering to the Right and argues that the president’s personal transgressions were inseparable from his political corruption.”

I got told I was a white privilege racist by an African-American woman for pointing out that structural politics are more important than identity politics at this point in time. What use will those most important fights be when the public square is completely annihilated?

I know Twitter is not good for public discussion but fuck, that really made me sad.

yeah! and thanks. I had just reached some point and let myself fully seeth, your essay came in my feed right off when i came on here and i am really glad. You made me feel better, in my righteous anger, oh shit what is going on. Hey tho, i’m 52 and and there’s exponentially more people, mostly sorta young, who get the BS. Its incredible. the others are really weirder than ever tho like exponentially.
Lisa in Araca

Thank you Helen! I have been hanging my head in despair. What the fuck happened to critical thinking? Our very capacity for critical thought has become so damaged and so shallow that I honestly do not think it can be redeemed. That understanding each other has become more important than understanding the system of wealth distribution is not just stupid, it’s dangerous. This idea that it’s our intentions that matter rather than economics is quite literally going to be the death of us.